Well it wouldn't have made much sense if you beat him completely, watched his corpse hit the ground, then you watched the cutscene of him besting you and escaping.

Well, yes, but that was not my point. My point was that in terms of story there is no reason why it shouldn't be "enough" to chip off only 20% of his health before the cutscene comes, if the player happens to loose the fight at that point.

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I suppose that's a broader issue though, whether games should use those plot devices at all.

Exactly, or: if games use plot devices like this they should be more careful or at least better planned out. There is this excellent satire on Modern Warfare 2's plot device (video contains a big spoiler)...

I've been playing my share of P&P RPG when I was younger (often as dungeon master) and always considered it bad form to have an unkillable deus ex machina npc to unravel the plot. My rule of thumb: if your plot relies on a deus ex machina, it probably wasn't all that good to begin with

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Since he's a central plot character it wouldn't have made sense to let him be killed off too early... although if any game would do that, it'd probably be a Witcher game.

Exactly! The issue with this encounter in the Witcher 2 is not just that he is unkillable by means of scripting, but that until this point the players decisions mattered. Suddenly control is taken away. In a game that doesn't allow much player control from the get go (e.g. every modern military shooter) the loss of control is something the player is accustomed to. In a game of perceived freedom the sudden loss of player choice hurts me much more. It's like playing Skyrim where you could walk wherever you like, but would suddenly run into an invisible wall at some pretty looking river.